


Consolation

by miabicicletta



Series: That's not how the story goes [1]
Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: AU, An Incomplete History of Awesome Makeouts, Between Episodes, F/M, First Time, Fix-It, Interlude, The hidden headquarters of secret fictional organizations and other HGTV programs I wish existed, V.F.D.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 05:31:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14763551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: “Welcome to the way station, Olivia Caliban.”





	Consolation

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the poem [Consolation by Wisława Szymborska](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/48271/consolation-56d2295fb70bb), which is my very favourite summarization of why people write fanfiction in the first place :)
> 
> It's taken me ages to finish this, and I still don't think I've done the picture I have in my head justice, but hey. Perfection is the enemy of done, right?
> 
> (Don't answer that.) 
> 
> Unbetaed, so all errors my own. First in a series of three or four, just, like, ridic beyond ridiculous AUs.

The sky is bright with end of day fire, casting long shadows through the low scrub brush along the road through the Hinterlands. Jacques Snicket steers the yellow cab off the highway, sending them down a dirt track into the setting sun. 

 

Olivia looks back to the asphalt fading in the distance behind them. “It feels like we’re abandoning the Baudelaires.”

 

“We’re _not_ abandoning them. But we can’t help if we’re not prepared. Or rested.”

 

She knows he’s right; he’s been right for miles. They’re exhausted as it is. Little help they’ll be to anyone running on fumes.

 

She slumps back against the seat, conceding the point. “I know.”

 

“There’s a checkpoint I know out here. Volunteers use it from time to time, either passing through or on the lam.”

 

A thought occurs to her. “ _Are_ we on the lam?” Olivia asks.

 

He catches her eye. “Not yet.”

 

The car bumps and bucks along the dirt road. Twice they come to a locked gate with imposing signage: _Municipal Property—No Public Access_ one reads. _EXTREME DANGER_  another. Jacques barely spares them a glance as he steps out to unlock their bolts and whistling while he searches his ring for the key.

 

Miles of low hills and chaparral give way to red rocks and colorful alluvial sand at the edge of a long shimmering body of water. Glinting with the brilliant sunset, the lake looks like fire made liquid. The road ends beside a small off-kilter shack at the edge of the wide, still lake. Jacques parks the car at its edge.

 

“What is this?” Olivia asks, stepping out. She holds a hand to her face, squinting into the fading sun.

 

“The Restricted Reservoir,” Jacques explains. He nods past the shack to a gated platform leading out over a lip of sand-colored concrete. Beyond, the lake falls away into a long, sheer cliff of cement, damming the lake up above a narrow rock gorge.

 

“This lake feeds the Rushing River, which fills the taps of every home and business from here to the city.”  

 

Red-pink light makes the walls of the canyon bright in the golden hour. She steps closer to the edge, watching a long spray of water tumble down, down, down into the rust-colored riverbed.

 

 _Beautiful,_  Olivia thinks. It’s been so long since she sat up and looked closely at the world. Even longer since she felt like she was part of it.

 

A scrape of metal makes her turn.

 

She turns to find Jacques opening a series of complicated, old locking mechanisms bolting the door of the shack. _Volumetric Fluid Distribution,_ the sign on it reads. Naturally.

 

As each lock opens, Jacques twirls the ring of keys around his finger to find the next before deftly slipping it into the lock as though it was new and well-oiled, instead of forgotten and derelict.

 

_Click, click, click._

 

Olivia frowns. It’s a strangely elaborate security system for a structure that looks incapable of fitting more than two or three people inside. Each side is half the length of the cab at most, and completely windowless. To her weary eyes, it hardly paints a picture of comfort.

 

She’s about to reiterate that perhaps they should just press on through the night to the village, when, with a final _click,_ the last lock unlatches.

 

Jacques swings the door open, tosses her a wink, and disappears inside. A loud metallic shriek rings out, followed by a _thud and_  the clanging of something large and hollow.

 

 _What on earth…_?

 

Olivia blinks, then moves to the entrance so she can see inside.

 

There is nothing.

 

“Jacques–” she starts to say, stepping warily toward the darkness of the doorway. Without warning, a beam of light blinks up from the floor, and she finds herself peering through an iron trapdoor down onto the landing above a high, winding spiral staircase. Jacques Snicket stares up at her. Below him, lights pop into existence down a long, chamber reminiscent of a mine shaft.

 

He swings the ring of keys around his finger.

 

“Welcome to the way station, Olivia Caliban.”

 

***

 

With the doors and locks once more secured behind them, he leads her down the stairs. Up the entire length of the upper chamber, a slice of the rock wall has been cut away, replaced with clear, strong glass that looks out into the murky depths of the Restricted Reservoir. Pale shafts of fading sunlight cut through the surface, revealing undulating glimmers of silt and sand.

 

Here and there, a catwalk juts out from a landing off the main staircase, leading toward shadowy, brick-lined tunnels. She counts at least four as they make their way deeper. Olivia wonders where those tunnels lead. Where they lead, and who has used them.

 

At the foot of the stairs, she takes the whole of the space in. To either side, passageways lead out. Above her are high, arching buttresses, cut from the same sandy stone as the dam, brace up the chamber ceiling.

 

Before her is a long main room with a kitchen tucked at the far end and a long dining table dividing it from a more informal space. A cluster of overstuffed chairs and sofas are nestled cozily together. Bookshelves and numerous photos and framed maps line the walls, and thick rugs lay across the floor. A record player and a radio sit surrounded by LPs. Green and gold sconces line the walls, filling the room with a warm, moody glow. They must be more than sixty feet underground.

 

“This is…”

 

Words fail her. Slightly sinister? Bizarrely cozy? Incongruous and astounding and unlike any place she has ever been?

 

“...quite the detour,” she finishes. “Who uses this?”

 

“Volunteers who need to come and go,” Jacques explains, removing his jacket and folding it over an armchair.

 

“And it’s just empty?”

 

He looks around, wistful, before catching her eye. “Most of the time. There used to be a volunteer stationed here round the clock, ready with information, insight, support. Someone still passes through every few months to restock supplies. Check for messages or codes. But..." He gives a small shake of the head, turns his palms up in futility. "It isn’t what it used to be.” He doesn't explain further. He doesn't have to.

 

 _None of us are what we used to be_ , Olivia wants to say. She left Prufrock Prep not three days before, and she’ll never be that person ever again.

 

Jacques gestures to a deep blue armchair. “Make yourself comfortable,” he says.

 

She sinks down into the chair, grateful he talked her into a proper rest, and takes a moment to regroup.

 

Her feet ache. With a sigh, she pulls off her boots and socks, flexing her toes. The relief of it is a good and simple feeling, like the weight of a favorite blanket across your lap, or a cool drink right when you need it most.

 

She yawns, stretching her neck and shoulders, feeling the delightful pop of tense ligaments.

 

“I can show you to bed.”

 

Olivia looks sharply over her shoulder.

 

“To rest. If you’re tired, that is,” Jacques adds quickly, looking a bit flustered.    

 

It’s not the first innuendo to pass between them.

 

She shakes her head. “Thank you, not yet. I’m too keyed up to sleep right now.”

 

Jacques rummages through a cupboard while she makes a study of her surroundings.

 

She rises, walks the length of the long wooden table to the open kitchen. It looks like it could seat at least twenty. Perhaps more. Along the wall are endless maps, watercolours, bathymetric diagrams, blueprints.

 

“Where did this place come from?” she asks, looking at a topographic map of Mt. Fraught and the course of the Stricken Stream. It's truly extraordinary. 

 

Jacques sets cans and glass jars on the countertop. “Members of our organization built it years ago, long before the schism. A Volunteer was part of the original project that created the reservoir and dammed up the river so the city was ensured a long-term water supply. She designed and built this location for the V.F.D., then eventually connected it to other, older tunnels and passageways we've relied on for many years. Just as we've come to use this. ”

 

“And I thought the city station was impressive,” Olivia quips, surveying a spice rack as her eyes flick over the kitchen counters, the cupboard, the shelves. And it had been to her still-green volunteer eyes: a unmarked door in a dim-lit movie theater, behind which all manner of outfits, disguises and tools were stored.

 

She has a million questions she wants to ask, though quietly. It’s a strange and unlikely space she’s found herself in—somehow homey, but intimidating, too. In the low lamplight, looking up at an underwater window like a wall of stained glass, the Hinterlands way station feels more like a church or a temple than a respite. Devoted as their volunteers are, maybe it’s that too. It makes Olivia feel as though she should whisper.

 

“Are your other locations as auspicious as this?” she asks Jacques. 

 

“Some. But none so much as the headquarters.”

 

He gestures to a map several down from the one of Mt. Fraught, and begins to tell her about the crown jewel of V.F.D. hideouts, built high in the Mortmain Mountains years before.

 

Despite her unease and dread at the Baudelaire’s misfortune; despite all her fears for the Quagmire triplets; despite her abandoned career and unknown future, just being in proximity to Jacques Snicket’s strong and sure sense of purpose soothes Olivia’s worried nerves.

 

It helps, too, that she likes the way his eyes crinkle when he’s mid-explanation. She likes his eyes, and his explanations.

 

She likes rather a lot about him, really.  

 

***

 

It’s been a long time since the way station was outfitted and stocked to even half the capacity it was intended for, but there are still canned good and dried herbs, and since one of Jacques’ very first lessons as a trainee volunteer was to learn to make a _mirepoix_ from nothing and soup from scratch, it takes no time at all to roll up his sleeves and get a warm if simple meal simmering on the stove.

 

Olivia leans against the counter, handing him ingredients in precise measurements. She organizes the shelves, rearranges the dishware while they talk. He admires her organization and efficiency, her bright laugh and her big heart. Especially for the children.  

 

“Did you know their parents?” she asks.

 

Jacques nods, stirring saffron and salt into the broth. “Both. Very well.” He doesn’t mention Lemony, though he’s not sure why. For the same reason he hasn’t mentioned Kit and her history with Olaf. There are somethings he’s never understood about his siblings. Maybe never will.

 

“Almost all of us joined from a very young age,” he adds. “Just children, really.”

 

Olivia folds a tea towel with military precision. She likes having something to do, he’s noticed. She likes a task to focus on. “You must have been close.”  

 

“They were among my dearest friends.”

 

She looks up. “I’m sorry.”

 

He gives her a soft smile, shrugs. "Their children have suffered far worse. The Quagmires and Baudelairs have all lost their parents." 

 

"That may be. But it doesn't make the loss of your friends any less terrible." She brushes past, giving his forearm a sympathetic squeeze. The slide of her hand is enough to make goosebumps pebble across his skin. 

 

She studies a wall of hanging pans. “I wish…” She shakes her head, reaching out to rearrange them by size and use. Cast iron moves up. Saute goes left. Omelette goes right. “It makes me so angry. And sad. And more angry. Those children have been through so much.”

 

He watches her continue to make busy work for herself, sensing there is something more motivating her desire to help the children than sympathy alone. 

 

She looks up when he places a hand between her shoulder blades. “We’ll find them.”

 

Her eyes are large and luminous, full of questions he can only hope to answer. “And then what do we do?”

 

“Whatever we can.”

 

***

 

They share soup and conversation, he matches her questions with many of his own.

 

She is ebullient and articulate, but when he asks about her family, she shakes her head. “Gone,” she says, and changes the subject.

 

He thinks he might understand Olivia Caliban a bit more after that.  

 

She makes tea after they wash up the dishes. Olivia takes a seat on the worn, leather sofa with her bare feet tucked beneath her while he peruses the bookshelves.

 

“I feel like I could hide down here forever,” Olivia says. She cradles her teacup in two hands, eyes unfocused and far away. “Hide from all the terrible things and the terrible people in the world.”

 

“I’m not sure that’s what they had in mind.”

 

“Isn’t it? Headquarters hidden in the sides of mountains and secret lairs beneath a lake,” she points toward the underwater window with her teacup as she sets the cup and saucer on a side table. “The V.F.D. seems to collect talented people with a knack for hiding.”

 

He thinks of his brother, thinks of Olaf and his gang, Kit and Beatrice and everything that went wrong all those years ago.  

 

Jacques shakes his head. “We may go unseen when we can help it,” he argues. “But that’s different from running away.”

 

Her eyes down. She draws a breath, letting some of the tension out of her. “Forgive me, I’m being silly,” she says, waving a hand in dismissal at herself. She looks up at him, expression softer, and tips her chin to the books. “Do all your secret way stations have such a well-curated reading selection?”

 

Jacques flourishes one hand along the shelves. “They do if I can help it,” he replies.

 

“So you come here often?” There’s a teasing in her question, though it isn’t entirely a joke.

 

Jacques gives her as simple an answer as he has. “I haven’t been here in years. But I always keep a key.”

 

Her eyes flick to the shelves of books. “What interests you? Fiction? History? Reference?”

 

“All the above, and more. But this is my favorite section.”

 

She quirks that brow again. It’s becoming one of his favorite responses, he decides.

 

“Poetry,” he clarifies.

 

She eyes him up and down in appraisal, looking pleased at what she finds. “Quite the hidden depths to you, Jacques Snicket.”

 

“I wouldn’t say that.”

 

She rolls her eyes and blows on her tea to cool it. “I think you’re being modest.”

 

“I’m never modest.”

 

Her eyes twinkle. “Go on, then: Who is your favorite?”

 

He raises a hand to his chest. “Just one? That’d be like choosing a favorite child.”

 

Her brows go up. 

 

“I assume,” he adds. “Here.”

 

He pulls a thick volume from the shelf, smooths a bit of dust from the cover. “Pablo Neruda. Chilean revolutionary, modernist writer, unlikely diplomat. He wrote poems of rebellion for love of his people, and surrealist odes to the most ordinary things: oranges, chairs, wine.”

 

“Ordinary things can still be important. Life-changing, even. Like books.”

 

“Like books,” he agrees. “Or sugar bowls,” he says.  

 

“Or taxi cabs,” she counters with such warmth in her voice, he might dare to call it happy.

 

Across the room, their eyes meet. It’s tentative, whatever frission is there between them, but undeniable. 

 

Jacques turns the volume over, flipping through the pages. “He also wrote sonnets so beautiful, your very soul aches to hear them.”

 

“Read me one.”

 

Jacques licks his thumb as he flips through the pages, feeling overly warm and knowing it isn’t the ventilation system to blame. He turns to the index and finds what he’s been looking for. When he settles himself on the sofa, they’re so close their knees could touch.

 

_You will come with me,_

_at that hour I wait for you,_

_at that hour and at every hour,_

_at every hour I wait for you._

_And when the sadness that I hate comes_

_to knock at your door,_

_tell her that I am waiting for you_

_and when loneliness wants you to change_

_the ring in which my name is written,_

_tell loneliness to talk with me,_

_that I had to go away_

_because I am a soldier,_

_and that there where I am,_

_under rain or under_

_fire,_

_my love, I wait for you._

 

These are words he knows well. He knows their rhythm, knows their rhyme; knows the cadence for speaking them, and where the silences should fall. He is flattered by the way she leans chin in hand on the back of the sofa as she listens, attention rapt. Then again, he’d expect nothing less from a librarian in possession of so sharp a mind and such extensive training.

 

_And so this letter ends_

_with no sadness:_

_my feet are firm upon the earth,_

_my hand writes this letter on the road,_

_and in the midst of life I shall be_

_always_

_beside the friend, facing the enemy,_

_with your name on my mouth_

_and a kiss that never_

_broke away from yours._

 

Olivia presses a hand to her collar. “That’s beautiful,” she says when he closes the book.

 

“That’s Neruda,” Jacques answers, as if honor and duty and love were things he knew of only from poetry. Though, he supposes, some of those things he’s still only known secondhand. He traces the length of the book's of the spine for a moment, lost in thoughts and memories, then sets both them and the book aside.

 

“What about you, Olivia Caliban?”

 

She takes a tiny sip from her teacup. “What about me?”

 

“Do you have a favorite writer, poet, novelist?”

 

She scoffs. “Only about a thousand.”

 

“Naturally.”

 

“Careful, Jacques. Talking books with a librarian could keep us up all night.”

 

“I’ve no doubt you could.”

 

The moment expands, possibilities daring to unfurl. The corner of her mouth lifts. _Yes_ , she seems to say. _I could_.

 

She tips her head back side to side, revealing the long, slender column of her throat as she thinks.

 

Jacques takes a steadying sip from his tea.

 

“Wisława Szymborska,” she answers after brief consideration. “You know, since we’re talking internationally recognized award-winning post-modernists of the mid-twentieth century, and all.”  

 

Jacques sets his tea aside. Some lucky stars of his are shining bright tonight.  

 

“‘Darwin,’” he recites from memory. “‘They say he read novels to relax. But only certain kinds: nothing that ended unhappily. If anything like that turned up, enraged, he flung the book into the fire.’”

 

A look of surprise turns to one of delight. A smile blooms at the corner of her mouth. “‘True or not,’” Olivia continues. “‘I’m ready to believe it.’”

 

“‘Scanning in his mind so many times and places, he’d had enough of dying species, the triumphs of the strong over the weak–’”

 

“‘–the endless struggles to survive, all doomed sooner or later.’”

 

“‘He’d earned the right to happy endings, at least in fiction.’”

 

“‘Hence the indispensable silver lining. The lovers reunited–’”

 

“‘The families reconciled–’”

 

“‘The doubts dispelled–’”

 

“‘Fidelity rewarded–’”

 

“‘Fortunes regained–’”

 

“‘Treasures uncovered–’”

 

“‘Good names restored–’”

 

“‘Greed daunted–’”

 

“‘Troublemakers banished to other hemispheres–’”

 

“‘Orphans sheltered, wounds healed over–’”

 

“‘Prodigal sons summoned home–’”

 

“‘Cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean–’”

 

“‘General merriment and celebration–’”

 

She turns her head, expectant, like she’s asking the final question of a test. “‘And the dog Fido, gone astray in the first chapter…”

 

“...turns up barking gladly in the last,” Jacques finishes.

 

Olivia beams, eyes bright, cheeks pink, and Jacques Snicket is sure he’s never met someone more beautiful in his entire life.

 

“Well done,” she says. “The V.F.D. is lucky to have a volunteer so dedicated to maintaining its libraries.”

 

“A room without books is like a body–”

 

“–without a soul,” she finishes. “Cicero said that.”

 

“Brilliant.” He can’t help it. It’s staring him in the face and he’s powerless to look away.  

 

“He _was_ one the greatest political and rhetorical minds of Roman antiquity.”  

 

“I meant you,” he says.

 

It’s a bolt of lightning, this time. A split-second shift from first gear to fifth, foot to the floor. He leans over and presses his mouth to hers.

 

She tastes like oolong and honey, all smoke and sweetness. It’s as easy as breathing, wanting her. As second nature as releasing the clutch and letting the engine sing. She’s magnetic, like true north, and he’s as lost around her as a roadmap without a legend, a compass whirling wildly off course.

 

With one hand he traces the curve of her cheekbone, slides his other arm around her waist, pulling her so close he can feels the insistent beat of her heart in her chest against his own. Olivia slides her fingers in his hair, nails biting gently at his scalp. 

 

They break away, foreheads touching. He wants to end every distance between them. Wants her as close as can be. His head is spinning, like they’ve been drinking wine all evening instead of tea.

 

He swallows, somewhat at a loss for words. “I’ve met many brave and well-read people in my life. But I’ve never met anyone like you, Olivia Caliban.”

 

“Neither have I.” She cups his jaw in one hand, lips warm and soft against his. “Jacques Snicket. Show me to bed.”

 

Blood pounds in his chest, and in his ears. “Are you tired?”

 

She shakes her head, beaming a smile. “Not at all.”

 

***

 

The first two rooms they stumble in to are filled with long rows of bunks. It’s been years and the details are a bit lost, but he knows the caretaker always had a bigger, more private room for their rotation.  

 

“Looking for the penthouse?” Olivia quips as he closes the door to the second room. She smirks at him, and his only response is to press her against the next door and kiss her senseless.

 

She turns the handle, pulling them inside to the space he’s been looking for. The room is spacious, with a larger bed against the far wall. More maps, and blueprints, a writing desk and a long mirror. She kisses him hard, not breaking away until it becomes clear neither of them can find a source of light.

 

“Where is–?”

 

“Here.” Jacques spies the wall switch. Flicks it.

 

Nothing.

 

He raises a finger. “Hold that thought.”

 

Before she can respond, he’s dashing out to drum up matches and a pair of candles he spied in a cupboard earlier. He finds a mismatched candleholders and carries them back to her like an offering. When he places them on the writing desk, the light sends dancing shadows against stone and glass. He realizes what he thought was a mirror is another glass wall cut, a portal to the dark lake bottom.

 

“Jacques,” she says. She reaches out to wrap her arms around his neck. She way she kisses him is like coming home.

 

He slides his hands under the thin, silky white tank she’d been wearing under her dark jacket, finds her skin even softer. At first she’s tentative, a bit self-conscious even, but leans into the moment, pulling the shirt over her head, tossing it toward a wall without aim. A pink flush crosses her throat and chest and the tops of her breasts and for the life of him, Jacques Snicket is undone. She’s like an open road, fading off into the horizon—all unknowns, but leading the way.

 

He presses hot, open-mouth kisses to her neck that pull a delighted little sound of pleasure from her throat. He wants to hear that sound again, wants to hear that sound every hour of every day.

 

He has to thank Jacquelyn for a forty-second phone call two days before that put them on this road together. He’ll send her a gift basket, or possibly a new grappling hook.  

 

Olivia’s tongue finds a spot by his ear that sends white-hot sparks of pleasure through him.

 

Strike that. He’s going to build Jacquelyn a _momument_.

 

Slim little fingers make quick work of the buttons on his shirt while Jacques merely slides his hands along her hips, her breasts, anywhere he can touch. He falls back when his knees touch the mattress; she slips out of her dark trousers, lips beestung, hair is falling from the bun she had worn earlier in the day.

 

“Hmmm,” Olivia sighs, nudging her nose against his and straddling his lap. She giggles as he runs his hands along the side of her rib cage, and every inch of skin he can find. He toes his shoes off.

 

She cups his face. He holds her close.

 

Her fingertips skim down his back and along his neck, sending little a thrill up his spine. She’s brilliant and beautiful, this woman. She’s brave and dedicated and kissing him like tomorrow might not come. Fine by him. For all the diesel-fueled fire in his veins, there’s a rightness to this he’s never felt before. Maybe he’s getting more like Lemony with age, falling for bright-eyed women with minds like diamonds. That’d be new; he’s met many clever, pretty women over the years, and never once has it been like this.

 

In some hidden and only half-conscious compartment of his mind, Jacques wonders if might finally be starting understand...something. Something his siblings knew long before.

 

They shed the last of their clothes and he rolls her beneath him, feeling the warm silk of her skin below his lips and hands. Her breathing hitches.

 

“Please,” Olivia breathes, angling her hips just so.

 

“Are you sure?” He tries to say, offer an out, though it might just kill him.

 

“Jacques _, please_ ,” she says, insistent.

 

It’s enough to make him want to thank all the gods of every belief system he’s ever heard of, along with all the others he hasn’t.

 

She sighs happily as he slides inside her, licking a stripe across his lips like a cat at the cream and saying his name like a breathy mantra again, again, again. She’s not quiet, not at all, encouraging him on with happy little sighs and throaty gasps.

 

Not once does she stop smiling.

 

***

 

She’s reading when he wakes from a doze, warm and soft at his side, and wrapped in a faded paisley sheet.  

 

He presses his mouth to her shoulder blade, trails a fingertip along the length of her spine. “What do you have there?” he asks, peering over her shoulder.

 

“Your Mr. Neruda. You see, my bedmate—normally quite the conversationalist—fell asleep,” she says with mock reproach. She turns on her side to face him, pokes him in the shin with her foot. “A girl has to entertain herself somehow.”

 

She’s taken her contacts out, is wearing her glasses again. Those glasses do something to him. Make him feel twenty-two and reckless and invincible and a little bit mad with desire.

 

“Thought I might have worn you out," he says. 

 

“Clearly you were wrong.”

 

“Clearly.” He leans over her books to kiss her once. “A thousand pardons for leaving you bored.” He flashes her a hungry grin. “Let's see how long you can keep it up.”

 

She arches that brow at him, the way he’s learning to love. _Isn’t that my line?_ she says without words, giving him a saucy smile. “I’ll have you know that I can read for a _very_ long time.”

 

“Among many things, I’m sure.”

 

“You should be.”

 

He draws the sheet away from her body, winks. "Humor me."

 

“‘In you the wars and the flights accumulated. From you the wings of songbirds rose,’” she reads.

 

He kisses his way down the smooth skin of her stomach, then her hip, lower.

 

“‘It was the hour of the assault and the kiss. The hour of the spell that blazed like a light—’ _Ohhh_...”

 

She manages for longer than he expected, but when the book falls to the floor with a gentle _thud_ , it is forgotten for quite some time.

 

***

 

Later, still and sated but not yet sleeping, she lays against him, her head on his shoulder. Still smiling, too. He can feel it on his skin, and deeper still.

 

“Tomorrow we’re going to save them,” Olivia says. Her mind is already moving on, fixing on the next stop, their next milestone on the mission. She anxiously traces a fingernail across his chest as if writing her worries into an invisible tattoo.  

 

He curls his hand around hers, linking their fingers, holds them to his chest.

 

_We will. I promise._

 

He touches his lips to the crown of her head. “Yes ma’am.”

 

***

 

In the morning she wakes to dark green, yellow dappling light.

 

“Do you do this with all your recruits?” She finds herself asking, outright. She doesn't really think him the type. Still, one never knows... 

 

“Never. Not once,” he says, and by the earnest expression in his eyes, she believes him. “Well, at least once, now,” he amends. Reaching across the sheets, he pulls her to him, smoothing his large hands along her back. She slings a leg over his hip. 

 

“Twice now,” she points out.  

 

“I've always been fond of things that come in threes."

 

She pushes back, moving toward and over him. 

 

"Olivia," he sighs, as she slides onto him. She runs her hands along his broad chest, feeling the his arms as they wrap around her, pulling her into a embrace.  

 

They’re being reckless like she’s never been in all her life, but for reasons Olivia can’t fully explain, not yet, she feels safe with him. She’s already put her life in his hands. He’d given her a rope and asked for her trust. He hadn’t let her fall.

 

She might be falling now.

 

The feeling leaves her dizzy. She kisses him and slides off.

 

He catches the drift and settles over her, pressing her forehead to hers. She tips her mouth up, brushing his lips gently, and suddenly everything becomes softer. Slower, like movement through water. Maybe it's the light or wanting to make the most of their last moments, away from it all. 

 

They move with no urgency, every intention delicate and feather light. She slides her arms up beside her head, flexing her fingers. In the next breath he’s filled them with his own, pressing them down into the soft, slightly musty sheets, all while kissing her breathless.

 

How impossible it is that only few days ago a strange man appeared out of nowhere and helped here see what not even a view thirty stories into the sky could. He showed her a bigger, more complicated, and—yes, it must be said—a crueler world than she had known before, but one that was brave and noble, too. He’s pulled her out of a small corner in some side pocket of nowhere and given her something to believe in. Something to pin her hopes and dreams to. A vessel for her every literary and philosophical principle.

 

The morning light grows, piercing further down through the still deep waters. The day is beginning.  

 

“Be nice to stay like this,” he says, after. Across the pillow, barely a breath between them, his hair in every direction, he strokes her arm. She likes this version of him, so much softer without the guard he seems so determined to keep up. “Here, where everything is so...”

 

“Quiet," she finishes. She brushes hair from his face. “But we can’t.”

 

“No, we can’t.”

 

“Maybe we’ll come back. Someday. Some other interlude, on some other mission.”

 

He smirks at her, tracing the line of her shoulder. “An interlude?”

 

“A break, a recess, a respite. The brief pause in the narrative. A temporary amusement.”

 

“Temporary.” His fingers ghost along her elbow, his eyes forging the path ahead.

 

She’s not sure of his meaning. Is it a question, agreement, assertion?

 

When he offers nothing more to elaborate, she’s not sure she wants to know the answer, either. There are some ways she isn’t very brave at all.

 

Olivia closes her eyes as he traces patterns and symbols across her skin like words she cannot read.

 

***

 

As with the V.F.D. station in the city, the way station contains a wardrobe room full of disguises, with outfits and accessories enough to equip any of the group’s vigilant volunteers. After a highly necessary and deeply restorative shower, Olivia finds a skirt and coat that fit what she knows of the buttoned-up leanings of their destination, and a blouse that decidedly does not.

 

Jacques is writing a message to another volunteer at the long table. The map of the Hinterlands, the Valley of the Four Drafts, the Mortmain Mountains lies folded at his elbow. With a flourish, he signs his name, folds the paper over, and tucks it into an envelope. Seals it, scrawls something on the front, and places it in inside his coat pocket.

 

Olivia makes a mental note to ask him about codes and messages between members. They’ll have to go over proper communication protocols soon. There’s so much she doesn’t know.

 

She gestures outward with her hands, looking down at her outfit. She feels a bit foolish, like a child playing dress up. “What do you think?”

 

“I have my work cut out for me.” He stares a moment, approaching her, then takes her hand. “You’re a natural volunteer. Though a distractingly beautiful one,” he says, playful.

 

She smiles, and looks around the way station once more as they prepare to leave.

 

“You know, I think you’re wrong about this place. I think the people who built it _did_ intend it to be a true hideout, and an escape. A quiet place to rest from the world for a time so you can bear going back to it.”  

 

“Can you bear it?” Jacques asks.

 

“I think so. Can you?”

 

He squeezes her hand. “If you’re there with me.”

 

Later, she'll will look back on the interlude by the Restricted Reservoir like a dream: a collection of secret moments, equal parts extraordinary and insignificant, and only half-real.

 

She will replay it over in her mind, along with every conversation she has ever had with Jacques Snicket, trying to read greater meaning from what precious few words and deeds they shared. How different it might all have been.

 

In short, Olivia Caliban will be haunted.

 

But that will be later.

 

For now, the tension and uncertainty in her dissipate.

 

“Time to go, Olivia Caliban.”

 

She nods, holding his gaze. There’s fire in her, she’s realizing, that has only just started to burn. She wants to see this fight end. Wants to see what this day will bring, and the next. “We have orphans to save.”

 

“Villains to apprehend,” Jacques adds.  

 

“And then?”

 

He kisses the center of her palm, and somehow manages to be cool and charming about it all, like a hero from an old film. He even has the hat.

 

“The story isn’t over yet,” says Jacques Snicket.  

 

They climb the stairs and step out into the light.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a sucker for Neruda, obvs. The two poems quoted here are: 
> 
> [Letter On The Road](https://genius.com/Pablo-neruda-letter-on-the-road-annotated)  
> [The Song of Despair](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/song-despair)
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are adored and appreciated :)


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